[Bêthberry]

Normally taciturn, Ælfritha had become even more withdrawn, perhaps even morose, as the ride wore on. She had tried her best to respond politely to Malienna's attempts at conversation, but her mind was elsewhere, and Malienna soon wearied of the hesitant yes or no answers.

Coming upon what appeared to be the thieves' camp had changed the mood and tone of almost all the riders, but Ælfritha was particularly disturbed by the discovery. It had been Maikadurion, with his keen eyes, who had first made out the makeshift grave, and then the trampled, bloodied tracks.

The grave was unsettling in itself, for it had been disturbed by maurading small animals; the condition of the corpse has sickened everyone. It was galling to disrupt the pursuit to rebury one of the very thieves they had wished to catch, but the Rohirrim were moved by a sense of decency. And, strangely, the ritual seemed to some restore some small sense of decorum to a situation which was increasingly confused and frustrating.

Clearly, there had been horses lost here also, not just Doric in the attack they had sustained. Ælfritha had known every one of the four horses stolen from the White Horse stable. She had broken each one, trained each, curried each, cared for each. She knew where one was scared, where another had had a pulled tendon, where a third skin infections underneath its hair. She knew them almost as intimately as a mother knows her first child. And now she had a dread sense that at least several of the stolen horses were lost to whargs. Unease sat in her mouth like an iron bit as she wondered what else lay in store.